Out comes the storm
In a galloping parade
Of silver and iron
Honour masking the greed of men
In the rattling and dim wilderness
The rituals and the songs
Are ready to be extinguished
By those who rule over gods
And then a fatal sob
Pierces through the still ether
And the keepsakes of ages
Are washed away in a river the colour of blood
- A paradise is lost
And she dashed out of that darkness
Leaving behind her potions
And the archeology of knowledge
Clotted with blood of the wise and the heathen
Sacrificed onto an unfaithful god
On top of a sun-brimming temple
But the men came for her
As they always do
Filled with lust and rage
Gnawing, ripping, mutilating
That dark sacred flesh
Discarded on the wet ground
And she strode deeper and deeper
The wild one of her tribe
With only traces of echoes
Of the only voices she had known
But there are no voices here
They remain only as effigies
On dirty marble of the victors
- Silencio.
The guide with his cheesy hat, and colorful umbrella
encourages us to: gather 'round.
His anecdotal spiel is by rote. His shtick is fact-slim
and slick, but it’s also my current gestalt as I am dragged
unwillingly along by his CliffsNotes speech.
What catches my wandering eye
is that one of those ruined effigies
is a fair facsimile of myself.
He (a god/king of some minor something),
looks mildly disgusted, as if
a bothersome fly had landed on his crumbling nose.
My world-weary face reflects perfectly
his sour mien.
At last, I am processed meekly
back onto the tour bus, where predictably,
my fellow passengers are already
peering forward into a new fancifully imagined past
from an equally fanciful present.
We are a species gnawing at the roots of existence, hellbent on self-immolation, our every endeavor a funiculus of futility. The argent legacy of our forebears, squandered by imbecilic hands that molded us into hollow effigies, devoid of essence, yet rictus-grinning with vacuous ignorance.
Fear, the petrifying shackles that bind us, rendering us ciphers of compliance, indentured servants to the whims of the elected elite. We toil, mesmerized by the tintinnabulation of trinkets, and the numeric abstractions that promise ephemeral solace, but deliver only eternal enslavement.
We are fallen titans, parasitic echoes of greatness, our nebulous dreams reduced to flickering embers, as we succumb to the siren's song of servitude.
Worst of all someone is reading this right now thinking I am gloomy and need to smile, but can’t say I am wrong, my question to you is, your joking right?
Smeared In a pattern.
This Rorschach abstraction.
Flowing like satin.
In cascading fashion.
Symmetry, mimicry.
Mirroring the mind.
Coddling, throttling.
Either or is fine.
Full to bursting.
Ache encephalitis.
In many minds of how this building
pressure will ignite us.
"Ticky tacky" tinderboxes.
Longing for the flame.
Effigies of rememberance.
Not all burn the same.
The beauty of the sanguine bloom,
detonator primed.
T-minus the countdown.
Get on with the ride.
Functional, nominal.
Broken by design.
Apathy, empathy.
Whatever's left is mine.
In written depiction.
This Incessant chatter.
An empty inscription.
For a mindless matter.
A dispenser of dishonest vice, a peddler of blatant lies,
In his unscrupulous realms, nobility of truth sadly dies,
Where righteous vibes of morality and decency agonize;
Where benevolence cries, pensive in verity’s demise.
Masked in aura of dubious eyes, spurious is his smile,
Hiding deceptions of his charismatic, charlatan style;
Counterfeit is the profile sporting thrill of knavish devise,
Proffering affectionate gile, spinning webs of disguise.
Empowering hypnotism of an alluring, charming face,
Weaving traps of fanciful tales his adventures chase,
Mesmerizing them; seeking the disheartened as prey,
Bestowing faux lexicons of praise, that brazenly betray.
Broken pledges and vows, now bawl from his burial site,
Deep within remorseful soul, churning anguished fright,
Awakening graveyard of victims in nightmarish night,
Burning effigies of dreams destroyed, feelings contrite.
Be on guard for imposters vying lure of sensual glance,
Beware of tenders, beckoning love, enticing romance,
Beware of mountebank, a swindler~ thievery is his art;
Dedicated lifelong, to mission of stealing innocent heart.
The withering is so very beautiful.
Eyes build translucent shells for themselves.
there is a falling inward,
mouths move beneath appearance,
Expressions of mortality
falter,
as the mind begins to see
its own shallow reflections,
an understanding,
that all last breaths are a first kiss.
Atrophy inwardly shapes its own chrysalis.
Old man flowering
in a thin soup of himself,
a seasoned musk shaping iconic effigies,
of youth and age.
He rules the kingdom,
of the winter moon
Crone, touches her wilting lips,
the movement seduces angels.
A papery rose unfolds one more time,
Decline revives her, with yet more
weary wonders.
The withering is so very beautiful.
Light on evening water,
a lake gleams,
too deep to be crossed,
by any ferryman,
Night no longer lures
beauty to turn away from its journey.
Life walks itself,
into a sublime uncertainty.
A beauty arises,
shorn of both fire or hope,
mercy flares upon a crumbling edge.
Revelations burn-on.
At the center of an undefeated love,
a path winds ever inward.
Brimstone throats burned,
before bursting into combustible myths.
Dragons were effigies,
deeply scorched into hearts.
Forever became extinct, it became,
the lick of a decaying fire.
Smoke behind the ramparts.
Maddened man grubbed for fire,
in the warm soot of flinty roots.
Naked he smoldered to master,
the furnace flare of a dragon's breath.
Long he rubbed his flames raw,
made fire leap, wildly dance,
with a zealot's fervor.
Then it was,
that they made a great war
upon the world.
It was the bronzed bell of a tinseled Ocean ship.
Until destiny was scuttled by a fiery water witch.
In time, it became the haunting clang upon a reef.
A macabre Nic Nac for cliques that ruled the deep.
They returned like blue birds, lonely for a blossoming.
To pay homage to every sailor overtaken by the sea.
They lay bouquets of flowers, over shadowed grief...
as ghosts pared sweet memories into paper effigies.
Between shuffles of worn decks and ninety proof lips.
They spin tales of crimson seas and horrible dorsal fins...
Torn hearts and sails, forever on a starboard list
Drifting between a blue refrain and the salty mist.
In the graying vein of time, everything's forgotten.
The sweet angelic, the mundane, the eternally rotten.
Gravestones hoard salt within their granite cracks.
Tokens to a time when auroras bled into blackness.
One by one the crew will drift from this pearled realm.
Riding TradeWinds into the gilded scented heavens...
or becoming driftwood, in the brackish heart of hell...
as the captain sways to the clang of his beloved water bell.
. . . I stoned the lord of death to death
we lye, now, side by side
as
effigies of who we tried to be
among countless
revolutions
among countless
massacres
evaporating into mixtures
of all who passed
that day, united
beyond soils of new shoots
I, a deserter
I, a warrior
I, a beggar
I, a zealot
with the lamb
gathering stones . . .
In ancient cities and times,
kings, rulers and their often-faceless consorts,
were exalted in marble statuary,
yet
so much of those effigies
now remain headless.
Those bygone exalted figures
have lost their heads,
(or occasionally the odd arm).
I ask myself,
where did all their heads go?
Were they deemed to be sculptured flowers,
doomed to be dead headed like roses,
by stone-faced gardeners?
The beheaded, the headless,
litter history,
it makes me want to check my own neck,
to confirm my often weak-headed state.
Heads are easy targets,
you strike a light in the dark
then some petty tyrant takes offence
and poof,
there goes your head.
Genghis Khan played polo
with human heads.
If we were born
with a dotted line around our necks
we might put two and two together,
we might be better prepared,
for being booted around
like footballs.
If I had been clearly told
to always keep my head up my ass,
I might not have had this death wish,
to write weird poetry.
The roads leading away
circle the distances
and seem to go nowhere.
They seed the horizon
with promises, disorganising
the senses and reason
until there is only a hole,
a dark cave into
the interior.
Effigies stare out of the dark
cloaked in symbols that can
only be deciphered by the soul.
This is the language
of the visionary, gifted seer
of the modern. For this traveler
in the shadowlands
of the psyche, there is either
transcendence or death,
mattering little if counted
as one more in history's legion
of the forgotten,
or a dazzling occupant
of another realm.
His words haunt,
coming agonizingly close
to revelation, enchanting
the soul with the stolen
melodies of the sublime
before falling silent
as homeless angels
must do, a casualty
of flesh and blood.
TRANSIENT
made visible
in the eponymous
to
first appear
a
point a
in
linear perspective
relief
with expressive
intensity
a breath
a downcast gaze
with furrowed brow
a presence
of
the
otherwise
as
realism
as
is heightened
by the
remarkable
facilitated
articulated
so processional
readily available
talismanic
effigies
of imagination
realised
by
desire
I always seem
to end up here, shuffling
along the river, soul deep
in its waters. I wallow
for a while like an old,
crusty animal, trying
to rid myself
of the usual parasites.
These pests gasp
for air beneath its tides
and thick mud.
A soul must have a place
to go for the caked on grime
of life to be washed off.
It seems a law written
into the DNA of our psyche.
For some, sacramental ritual
once scrubbed them clean
but this has fallen
out of favour, hollowed out
by hierarchical abuse
and an absent God.
Others simply ask
for a voucher.
Nature has always offered
its sacred spaces to mend
troubled souls. Or there
are caves you can carve
into the mind where a still
resides and encloses
a healing peace. Other
excavations hold effigies
who promise the faithful
any number of offerings
to soothe the spirit.
In the end, you just need
a place where you can go,
somewhere within a breath,
or walking distance,
or a mystery only the soul
seems to know.
Take the morning and wring it
with calloused hands
to see what drips
from the bloat of its beginnings,
a splash of light to give
gleam to a memory or mix
disparate things in metaphor
for the ordinary to flash fresh
and be seen anew.
Or perform the rites
of distillation, the craft of making
what something in us craves
yet gives such meagre portion
just to dampen lips and no more,
whilst elsewhere in the shadows,
or loitering in between,
is the glint of promises
our monuments can never keep.
Blunted tools butcher out
gross effigies of our gods
or fit stone hands to feel
the touch of flesh. The morning
yields its bounty to give comfort
and set something gentle
within us free,
leaving mere phantoms
to inhabit the places
where we want to be.
>b>and this bizarre possibility
what does the future present to us?
we can break calendars,
I thought.
shedding skin like snakes,
we can shine dark
lighting up the chromosomes that we are.
we can create our avatars,
surpass ourselves,
become the effigies that will replace us
containing the courage we lost
when we shamefully weaken,
when we definitely walked away
of what we could become
when we accept to be
merely the humans we are
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